Theosophy Trust

Memorial Library

Tibetan Teachings

A LONG-DELAYED PROMISE FULFILLED

They who are on the summit of a mountain can see all men; in like manner they who are intelligent and free
from sorrow are enabled to ascend above the paradise of the Gods; and when they there have seen the subjection of man to birth and death and
the sorrows by which he is afflicted, they open the doors of the immortal.

– From the Tched-du brjod-pai tsoms of the BKAH-HGYUR

In the January number of the Theosophist for 1882, we promised our readers the opinions of the
Venerable Chohan-Lama – the chief of the Archive-registrars of the libraries containing manuscripts on esoteric doctrines belonging to the
Ta-loï and Tashu-hlumpo Lamas Rim-boche of Tibet – on certain conclusions arrived at by the author of Buddha and Early Buddhism.
Owing to the brotherly kindness of a disciple of the learned Chohan, than whom no one in Tibet is more deeply versed in the science of esoteric
and exoteric Buddhism, we are now able to give a few of the doctrines which have a direct bearing on these conclusions. It is our firm belief
that the learned Chohan's letters, and the notes accompanying them, could not arrive at a more opportune time. Besides the many and various
misconceptions of our doctrines, we have more than once been taken severely to task by some of the most intelligent Spiritualists for misleading
them as to the real attitude and belief of Hindus and Buddhists as to "spirits of the departed." Indeed, according to some
Spiritualists "the Buddhist belief is permeated by the distinctive and peculiar note of modern Spiritualism, the presence and guardianship
of departed spirits," and the Theosophists have been guilty of misrepresenting this belief. They have had the hardihood, for instance, to
maintain 'that this "belief in the intervention of departed human spirits" was anathema maranatha in the East, whereas it is "in
effect, a permeating principle of Buddhism."

What every Hindu, of whatever caste and education, thinks of the "intervention of departed
spirits" is so well known throughout the length and breadth of India that it would be loss of time to repeat the oft-told tale. There are a
few converts to modern Spiritualism, such as Babu Peary Chand Mittra, whose great personal purity of life would make such intercourse harmless
for him, even were he not indifferent to physical phenomena, holding but to the purely spiritual, subjective side of such communion. But, if
these be excepted, we boldly reassert what we have always maintained: that there is not a Hindu who does not loathe the very idea of the
reappearance of a departed "spirit" whom he will ever regard as impure; and that with these exceptions no Hindu believes that, except
in cases of suicide, or death by accident, any spirit but an evil one can return to earth. Therefore, leaving the Hindus out of the question, we
will give the ideas of the Northern Buddhists on the subject, hoping to add those of the Southern Buddhists to them in good time. And, when we
say "Buddhists," we do not include the innumerable heretical sects teeming throughout Japan and China who have lost every right to that
appellation. With these we have nought to do. We think but of Buddhists of the Northern and Southern Churches – the Roman Catholics and the
Protestants of Buddhism, so to say.

The subject which our learned Tibetan correspondent treats is based on a few direct questions offered by us
with a humble request that they should be answered, and the following paragraphs from Buddha and Early Buddhism:

"I have dwelt somewhat at length on this supernaturalism, because it is of the highest importance to
our theme. Buddhism was plainly an elaborate apparatus to nullify the action of evil spirits by the aid of good spirits operating at their
highest potentiality through the instrumentality of the corpse or a portion of the corpse of the chief aiding spirit. The Buddhist temple, the
Buddhist rites, the Buddhist liturgy, all seem based on this one idea that a whole or portions of a dead body was necessary. What were these
assisting spirits? Every Buddhist, ancient or modern, would at once admit that a spirit that has not yet attained the Bodhi or spiritual
awakenment cannot be a good spirit. It can do no good thing; more than that, it must do evil things.

"The answer of Northern Buddhism is that the good spirits are the Buddhas, the dead prophets. They come
from certain 'fields of the Buddhas' " to commune with earth.

Our learned Tibetan friend writes:

"Let me say at once that monks and laymen give the most ridiculously absurd digest of the Law of Faith,
the popular beliefs of Tibet. The Capuchin Della Penna's account of the brotherhood of the 'Byang-tsiub' is simply absurd. Taking from the
Bkah-hgyur and other books of the Tibetan laws some literal descriptions, he then embellishes them with his own interpretation. Thus he speaks of
the fabled worlds of 'spirits,' where live the 'Lha, who are like gods'; adding that the Tibetans imagine 'these places to be in the air above a
great mountain, about a hundred and sixty thousand leagues high and thirty-two thousand leagues in circuit; which is made up of four parts, being
of crystal to the east, of the red ruby to the west, of gold to the north, and of the green precious stone – lapis lazuli – to the south. In
these abodes of bliss they – the Lha – remain as long as they please, and then pass to the paradise of other worlds.'

"This description resembles far more – if my memory of the missionary-school-going period at Lahoula
does not deceive me the 'new Jerusalem coming down from God out of heaven' in John's vision – that city which measured 'twelve thousand
furlongs,' whose walls were of 'jasper,' the buildings of 'pure gold,' the foundations of the walls 'garnished with all manner of precious
stones' and 'the twelve gates were twelve pearls' – than the city of the Jang-Chhub either in the Bkah-hgyur or in the ideas of the Tibetans. In
the first place, the sacred canon of the Tibetans, the Bkah-hgyur and Bstan-hgyur, comprises one thousand seven hundred and seven distinct works
– one thousand and eighty-three public and six hundred and twenty-four secret volumes – the former being composed of three hundred and fifty and
the latter of seventy-seven folio volumes.

"Could they even by chance have seen them, I can assure the theosophists that the contents of these
volumes could never be understood by anyone who had not been given the key to their peculiar character, and to their hidden meaning.

"Every description of localities is figurative in our system; every name and word is purposely veiled;
and a student, before he is given any further instruction, has to study the mode of deciphering, and then of comprehending and learning the
equivalent secret term or synonym for nearly every word of our religious language. The Egyptian enchorial or hieratic system is child's play to
the deciphering of our sacred puzzles. Even in those volumes to which the masses have access, every sentence has a dual meaning, one intended for
the unlearned, and the other for those who have received the key to the records.

"If the efforts of such well-meaning, studious and conscientious men as the authors of Buddhist
Records of the Western World, and Buddha and Early Buddhism – whose poetical hypotheses may be upset and contradicted, one
by one, with the greatest ease – resulted in nought, verily then, the attempts of the predecessors and successors of the Abbés Huc, Gabet
and others must prove a sorry failure; since the former have not and the latter have, an object to achieve in purposely disfiguring the
unparalleled and glorious teachings of our blessed master, Shakya Thub-pa.

"In the Theosophist for October, 1881, a correspondent correctly informs the reader that
Gautama the Buddha, the wise, 'insisted upon initiation being thrown open to all who were qualified.' This is true; such was the original design
put for some time in practice by the great Sang-gyas, and before he had become the All-Wise. But three or four centuries after his separation
from this earthly coil, when Asoka, the great supporter of our religion, had left the world, the Arhat initiates, owing to the secret but steady
opposition of the Brâhmans to their system, had to drop out of the country one by one and seek safety beyond the Himalayas. Thus, though
popular Buddhism did not spread in Tibet before the seventh century, the Buddhist initiates of the mysteries and esoteric system of the Aryan
Twice-born, leaving their motherland, India, sought refuge with the pre-Buddhistic ascetics; those who had the Good Doctrine, even before the
days of Shâkya-Muni. These ascetics had dwelt beyond the Himâlayan ranges from time immemorial. They are the direct successors of
those Âryan sages who, instead of accompanying their Brâhman brothers in the pre-historical emigration from Lake Manasarovara across
the Snowy Range into the hot plains of the Seven Rivers, had preferred to remain in their inaccessible and unknown fastnesses. No wonder, indeed,
if the Âryan esoteric doctrine and our Arahat doctrines are found to be almost identical. Truth, like the sun over our heads, is one; but
it seems as if this eternal truism must be constantly reiterated to make the dark, as much as the white, people remember it. Only that truth may
be kept pure and unpolluted by human exaggerations – its very votaries betimes seeking to adapt it, to pervert and disfigure its fair face to
their own selfish ends – it has to be hidden far away from the eye of the profane. Since the days of the earliest universal mysteries up to the
time of our great Shâkya Tathâgata Buddha, who reduced and interpreted the system for the salvation of all, the divine Voice of the
Self, known as Kwan-yin, was heard but in the sacred solitude of the preparatory mysteries.

"Our world-honoured Tsong-kha-pa closing his fifth Damngag reminds us that 'every sacred truth, which
the ignorant are unable to comprehend under its true light, ought to be hidden within a triple casket concealing itself as the tortoise conceals
his head within his shell; ought to show her face but to those who are desirous of obtaining the condition of Anuttara Samyak Sambodhi' – the
most merciful and enlightened heart.

"There is a dual meaning, then, even in the canon thrown open to the people, and, quite recently, to
Western scholars. I will now try to correct the errors – too intentional, I am sorry to say, in the case of the Jesuit writers. No doubt but that
the Chinese and Tibetan Scriptures, so-called, the standard works of China and Japan, some written by our most learned scholars, many of whom –
as uninitiated though sincere and pious men – commented upon what they never rightly understood, contain a mass of mythological and legendary
matter more fit for nursery folklore than an exposition of the Wisdom Religion as preached by the world's Saviour. But none of these are to be
found in the canon; and, though preserved in most of the Lamasery libraries, they are read and implicitly believed in only by the credulous and
pious whose simplicity forbids them ever stepping across the threshold of reality. To this class belong The Buddhist Cosmos, written by
the Bonze Jin-ch'an, of Pekin; The Shing-Tao-ki, or 'The Records of the Enlightenment of Tathagata,' by Wang-Puh, in the seventh
century, The Hi-shai Sûtra, or 'Book of Creation,' various volumes on heaven and hell, and so forth – poetic fictions grouped
around a symbolism evolved as an after-thought.

"But the records from which our scholastic author, the monk Della Penna quotes – or I should rather
say, misquotes – contain no fiction, but simply information for future generations, who may, by that time, have obtained the key to the right
reading of them. The 'Lha' of whom Della Penna speaks but to deride the fable, they who 'have attained the position of saints in this world,'
were simply the initiated Arhats, the adepts of many and various grades, generally known under the name of Bhanté or Brothers. In the book
known as the Avatamsaka Sûtra, in the section on 'the Supreme Âtman – Self – as manifested in the character of the Arhats
and Pratyeka Buddhas,' it is stated that 'Because from the beginning, all sentient creatures have confused the truth, and embraced the false;
therefore has there come into existence a hidden knowledge called Alaya Vijnâna.' 'Who is in the possession of the true hidden knowledge?'
'The great teachers of the Snowy Mountain,' is the response in The Book of Law. The Snowy Mountain is the 'mountain a hundred and sixty
thousand leagues high.' Let us see what this means. The last three ciphers being simply left out, we have a hundred and sixty leagues; a Tibetan
league is nearly five miles; this gives us seven hundred and eighty miles from a certain holy spot, by a distinct road to the west. This becomes
as clear as can be, even in Della Penna's further description, to one who has but a glimpse of the truth. 'According to their law,' says that
monk, 'in the west of this world, is an eternal world, a paradise, and in it a saint called Ho-pahme, which means "Saint of Splendour and
Infinite Light." This saint has many distinct "powers," who are all called "chang-chüb",' which – he adds in a
footnote – means 'the spirits of those who, on account of their perfection, do not care to become saints, and train and instruct the bodies of
the reborn Lamas, so that they may help the living.'

"This shows that these presumably dead 'chang-chubs' are living Bodhisatwas or Bhanté, known
under various names among Tibetan people; among others, Lha or 'spirits,' as they are supposed to have an existence more in spirit than in flesh.
At death they often renounce Nirvâna – the bliss of eternal rest, or oblivion of personality – to remain in their spiritualized astral
selves for the good of their disciples and humanity in general.

"To some Theosophists, at least, my meaning must be clear, though some are sure to rebel against the
explanation. Yet we maintain that there is no possibility of an entirely pure 'self' remaining in the terrestrial atmosphere after his liberation
from the physical body, in his own personality, in which he moved upon earth. Only three exceptions are made to this rule:

"The holy motive prompting a Bodhisatwa, a Sravaka, or Rahat to help to the same bliss those who remain
behind him, the living; in which case he will stop to instruct them either from within or without; or, secondly, those who, however pure,
harmless and comparatively free from sin during their lives, have been so engrossed with some particular idea in connection with one of the human
mâyâs as to pass away amidst that all-absorbing thought; and, thirdly, persons in whom an intense and holy love, such as that of a
mother for her orphaned children, creates or generates an indomitable will fed by that boundless love to tarry with and among the living in their
inner selves.

"The periods allotted for these exceptional cases vary. In the first case, owing to the knowledge
acquired in his condition of Anuttara Samyak Sambodhi – the most holy and enlightened heart – the Bodhisatwa has no fixed limit. Accustomed to
remain for hours and days in his astral form during life, he has power after death to create around him his own conditions, calculated to check
the natural tendency of the other principles to rejoin their respective elements, and can descend or even remain on earth for centuries and
millenniums. In the second case, the period will last until the all-powerful magnetic attraction of the subject of the thought – intensely
concentrated at the moment of death – becomes weakened and gradually fades out. In the third, the attraction is broken either by the death or the
moral unworthiness of the loved ones. It cannot in either case last more than a lifetime.

"In all other cases of apparitions or communications by whatever mode, the 'spirit' will prove a wicked
'bhuta' or 'ro-lang' at best – the soulless shell of an 'elementary.' The 'Good Doctrine' is rejected on account of the unwarranted accusation
that 'adepts' only claim the privilege of immortality. No such claim was ever brought forward by any eastern adept or initiate. Very true, our
Masters teach us 'that immortality is conditional,' and that the chances of an adept who has become a proficient in the Alaya Vijñana, the
acme of wisdom, are tenfold greater than those of one who, being ignorant of the potentialities centered within his Self, allows them to remain
dormant and undisturbed until it is too late to awake them in this life. But the adept knows no more on earth, nor are his powers greater here
than will be the knowledge and powers of the average good man when the latter reaches his fifth and especially his sixth cycle or round. Our
present mankind is still in the fourth of the seven great cyclic rounds. Humanity is a baby hardly out of its swaddling clothes, and the highest
adept of the present age knows less than he will know as a child in the seventh round. And as mankind is an infant collectively, so is man in his
present development individually. As it is hardly to be expected that a young child, however precocious, should remember his existence from the
hour of his birth, day by day, with the various experiences of each, and the various clothes he was made to wear on each of them, so no 'self,'
unless that of an adept having reached Samma-Sambuddha – during which an illuminate sees the long series of his past lives throughout all his
previous births in other worlds – was ever able to recall the distinct and various lives he passed through But that time must come one day.
Unless a man is an irretrievable sensualist, dooming himself thereby to utter annihilation after one of such sinful lives, that day will dawn
when, having reached the state of absolute freedom from any sin or desire, he will see and recall to memory all his past lives as easily as a man
of our age turns back and passes in review, one by one, every day of his existence."

We may add a word or two in explanation of a previous passage, referring to Kwan-yin. This divine power was
finally anthropomorphized by the Chinese Buddhist ritualists into a distinct double-sexed deity with a thousand hands and a thousand eyes, and
called Kwan-shai-yin Bodhisatwa, the Voice-Deity, but in reality meaning the voice of the ever-present latent divine consciousness in man; the
voice of his real Self, which can be fully evoked and heard only through great moral purity. Hence Kwanyin is said to be the son of Amitabha
Buddha, who generated that Saviour, the merciful Bodhisatwa, the "Voice" or the "Word" that is universally diffused, the
"Sound" which is eternal. It has the same mystical meaning as the Vâch of the Brâhmans. While the Brahmans maintain the
eternity of the Vedas from the eternity of "sound," the Buddhists claim by synthesis the eternity of Amitabhâ, since he was the
first to prove the eternity of the Self-born, Kwan-yin. Kwan-yin is the Vâchîshvara or Voice-Deity of the Brahmans. Both proceed from
the same origin as the Logos of the neo-platonic Greeks; the "manifested deity" and its "voice" being found in man's Self,
his conscience; Self being the unseen Father, and the "voice of Self" the Son; each being the relative and the correlative of the
other. Both Vâchîshvara and Kwan-yin had, and still have, a prominent part in the Initiation Rites and Mysteries in the
Brâhmanical and Buddhist esoteric doctrines.

We may also point out that Bodhisatwas or Rahats need not be adepts; still less, Brâhmans, Buddhists,
or even "Asiatics," but simply holy and pure men of any nation or faith, bent all their lives on doing good to humanity.

DOCTRINES OF THE HOLY "LHA"

"The forms under which any living being may be reborn, are six-fold. The highest class are the Lha,
'spirits, highest beings, gods'; they rank next to the Buddhas, and inhabit the six celestial regions. Two of these regions belong to the
earth; but the four others, which are considered as superior mansions, lie in the atmosphere, far beyond the earth."

"As a consequence of premature decease, the 'Bardo' is prolongated. This is the middle state between
the death and the new rebirth, which does not follow immediately, but there exists an interval which is shorter for the good than for the
bad." – (EMIL SCHLAGINTWEIT, Buddhism in Tibet.)

The notes that follow are compiled. or rather translated, as closely as the idiomatic difficulties would
permit, from Tibetan letters and manuscripts, sent in answer to several questions regarding the western misconceptions of Northern Buddhism or
Lamaism. The information comes from a Gelung of the Inner Temple – a disciple of Bas-pa Dharma, the Secret Doctrine.

"Brothers residing in Gya-P-heling – British India – having respectfully called my master's attention
to certain incorrect and misleading statements about the Good Doctrine of our blessed Phag-pa Sang-gyas – most Holy Buddha – as alleged to be
carried on in Bhod-Yul, the land of Tibet, I am commanded by the revered Ngag-pa to answer them. I will do so, as far as our rules will permit me
to discuss so sacred a subject openly. I can do no more, since, till the day when our Pban-chhen-rin-po-chhe shall be reborn in the lands of the
P-helings – foreigners – and, appearing as the great Chom-dën-da, the conqueror, shall destroy with his mighty hand the errors and ignorance
of ages, it will be of little, if of any use to try to uproot these misconceptions."

A prophecy of Tsong-ka-pa is current in Tibet to the effect that the true doctrine will be maintained in its
purity only so long as Tibet is kept free from the incursions of western nations, whose crude ideas of fundamental truth would inevitably confuse
and obscure the followers of the Good Law. But, when the western world is more ripe in the direction of philosophy, the incarnation of
Pban-chhen-rin-po-chhe – the Great Jewel of Wisdom – one of the Teshu Lamas, will take place, and the splendour of truth will then illuminate the
whole world. We have here the true key to Tibetan exclusiveness.

Our correspondent continues:

"Out of the many erroneous views presented to the consideration of our master, I have his permission to
treat the following: first, the error generally current among the Ro-lang-pa – spiritualists – that those who follow the Good Doctrine have
intercourse with, and reverence for, Ro-lang-ghosts – or the apparitions of dead men; and, secondly, that the Bhanté – Brothers – or
'Lha,' popularly so-called – are either disembodied spirits or gods."

The first error is found in Buddha and Early Buddhism, since this work has given rise to the
incorrect notion that spiritualism was at the very root of Buddhism. The second error is found in the Succinct Abstract of the Great Chaos of
Tibetan Laws by the Capuchin monk Della Penna and the accounts given by his companions, whose absurd calumnies of Tibetan religion and laws
written during the past century have been lately reprinted in Mr. Markham's Tibet.

"I will begin with the former error," writes our correspondent. "Neither the Southern nor
Northern Buddhists, whether of Ceylon, Tibet, Japan or China, accept western ideas as to the capabilities and qualifications of the 'naked
souls.'

"For we deprecate unqualifiedly and absolutely all ignorant intercourse with the Ro-lang. For what are
they who return? What kind of creatures are they who can communicate at will objectively or by physical manifestation? They are impure, grossly
sinful souls, 'a-tsa-ras'; suicides; and such as have come to premature deaths by accident and must linger in the earth's atmosphere until the
full; expiration of their natural term of life.

"No right-minded person, whether Lama or Chhipa – non-Buddhist – will venture to defend the practice of
necromancy, which, by a natural instinct has been condemned in all the great Dharmas – laws or religions – and intercourse with, and using the
powers of these earth-bound souls is simply necromancy.

"Now the beings included in the second and third classes – suicides and victims of accident – have not
completed their natural term of life; and, as a consequence, though not of necessity mischievous, are earth-bound. The prematurely expelled soul
is in an unnatural state; the original impulse under which the being was evolved and cast into the earth-life has not expended itself – the
necessary cycle has not been completed, but must nevertheless be fulfilled.

"Yet, though earth-bound, these unfortunate beings, victims whether voluntary or involuntary, are only
suspended, as it were, in the earth's magnetic attraction. They are not, like the first class, attracted to the living from a savage thirst to
feed on their vitality. Their only impulse – and a blind one, since they are generally in a dazed or stunned condition – is, to get into the
whirl of rebirth as soon as possible. Their state is that we call a false Bar-do – the period between two incarnations. According to the karma of
the being – which is affected by his age and merits in the last birth – this interval will be longer or shorter.

"Nothing but some overpoweringly intense attraction, such as a holy love for some dear one in great
peril, can draw them with their consent to the living; but by the mesmeric power of a Ba-po, a necromancer – the word is used advisedly, since
the necromantic spell is Dzu-tul, or what you term a mesmeric attraction – can force them into our presence. This evocation, however, is totally
condemned by those who hold to the Good Doctrine; for the soul thus evoked is made to suffer exceedingly, even though it is not itself but only
its image that has been torn or stripped from itself to become the apparition; owing to its premature separation by violence from the body, the
'jang-khog' – animal soul – is yet heavily loaded with material particles – there has not been a natural disintegration of the coarser from the
finer molecules – and the necromancer, in compelling this separation artificially, makes it, we might almost say, to suffer as one of us might if
he were flayed alive.

"Thus, to evoke the first class – the grossly sinful souls – is dangerous for the living; to compel the
apparition of the second and third classes is cruel beyond expression to the dead.

"In the case of one who died a natural death totally different conditions exist; the soul is almost,
and in the case of great purity, entirely beyond the necromancer's reach; hence beyond that of a circle of evokers, or spiritualists, who,
unconsciously to themselves, practise a veritable necromancer's Sang-nyag, or magnetic incantation. According to the karma of the previous birth
the interval of latency – generally passed in a state of stupor – will last from a few minutes to an average of a few weeks, perhaps months.
During that time the 'jang-khog' – animal soul – prepares in solemn repose for its translation, whether into a higher sphere – if it has reached
its seventh human local evolution – or for a higher rebirth, if it has not yet run the last local round.

"At all events it has neither will nor power at that time to give any thought to the living. But after
its period of latency is over, and the new self enters in full consciousness the blessed region of Devachan – when all earthly mists have been
dispersed, and the scenes and relations of the past life come clearly before its spiritual sight – then it may, and does occasionally, when
espying all it loved, and that loved it upon earth, draw up to it for communion and by the sole attraction of love, the spirits of the living,
who, when returned to their normal condition, imagine that it has descended to them.

"Therefore we differ radically from the western Ro-lang-pa – spiritualists – as to what they see or
communicate with in their circles and through their unconscious necromancy. We say it is but the physical dregs, or spiritless remains of the
late being; that which has been exuded, cast off and left behind when its finer particles passed onward into the great Beyond.

"In it linger some fragments of memory and intellect. It certainly was once a part of the being, and so
possesses that modicum of interest; but it is not the being in reality and truth. Formed of matter, however etherealized, it must sooner or later
be drawn away into vortices where the conditions for its atomic disintegration exist.

"From the dead body the other principles ooze out together. A few hours later the second principle –
that of life – is totally extinct, and separates from both the human and ethereal envelopes. The third – the vital double – finally dissipates
when the last particles of the body disintegrate. There now remain the fourth, fifth, sixth and seventh principles: the body of will; the human
soul; the spiritual soul, and pure spirit, which is a facet of the Eternal. The last two, joined to, or separated from, the personal self, form
the everlasting individuality and cannot perish. The remainder proceeds to the state of gestation – the astral self and whatever survived in it
of the will, previous to the dissolution of the physical body.

"Hence for any conscious action in this state are required the qualifications of an adept, or an
intense, undying, ardent and holy love for someone whom the deceased leaves behind him on earth; as otherwise the astral ego either becomes a
'bhûta' – 'ro-lang' in Tibetan – or proceeds to its further transmigrations in higher spheres.

"In the former case the Lha, or 'man-spirit,' can sojourn among the living for an indefinite time, at
his own pleasure; in the latter the so-called 'spirit' will tarry and delay his final translation but for a short period; the body of desire
being held compact, in proportion to the intensity of the love felt by the soul and its unwillingness to part with the loved ones.

"At the first relaxation of the will it will disperse, and the spiritual self, temporarily losing its
personality and all remembrance of it, ascends to higher regions. Such is the teaching. None can overshadow mortals but the elect, the
'Accomplished,' the 'Byang-tsiub,' or the 'Bodhisatwas' alone – they who have penetrated the great secret of life and death – as they are able to
prolong, at will their stay on earth after 'dying.' Rendered into the vulgar phraseology, such overshadowing is to 'be born again and again' for
the benefit of mankind."

If the spiritualists, instead of conferring the power of "controlling" and
"guiding" living persons upon every wraith calling itself "John" or "Peter," limited the faculty of moving and
inspiring a few chosen pure men and women only to such Bodhisatwas or holy initiates – whether born as Buddhists or Christians, Brahmans or
Mussulmans on earth – and, in very exceptional cases, to holy and saintly characters, who have a motive, a truly beneficial mission to accomplish
after their departure, then would they be nearer to the truth than they are now.

To ascribe the sacred privilege, as they do, to every "elementary" and "elemental"
masquerading in borrowed plumes and putting in an appearance for no better reason than to say: "How d'ye do, Mr. Snooks?" and to drink
tea and eat toast, is a sacrilege and a sad sight to him who has any intuitional feeling about the awful sacredness of the mystery of physical
translation, let alone the teaching of the adepts.

"Further on Della Penna writes:

"'These chang-chüb – the disciples of the chief saint – have not yet become saints, but they
possess in the highest degree five virtues – charity, both temporal and spiritual, perfect observance of law, great patience, great diligence in
working to perfection, and the most sublime contemplation.'"

We would like to know how they could have all these qualities, especially the latter – trance – were they
physically dead!

"These chang-chüb have finished their course and are exempt from further transmigrations; passing
from the body of one Lama to that of another; but the Lama {meaning the Dalai-Lama} is always endowed with the soul of the same chang-chüb,
although he may be in other bodies for the benefit of the living to teach them the Law, which is the object of their not wishing to become
saints, because then they would not be able to instruct them. Being moved by compassion and pity they wish to remain chang-chüb to instruct
the living in the Law, so as to make them finish quickly the laborious course of their transmigrations. Moreover, if these chang-chüb wish,
they are at liberty to transmigrate into this or other worlds, and at the same time they transmigrate into other places with the same object.

"This rather confused description yields from its inner sense two facts: first, that the Buddhist
Tibetans – we speak of the educated classes – do not believe in the return of the departed spirits, since, unless a soul becomes so purified upon
earth as to create for itself a state of Bodhisat-hood – the highest degree of perfection next to Buddha – even saints in the ordinary
acceptation of the term would not be able to instruct or control the living after their death; and, secondly, that, rejecting as they do the
theories of creation, God, soul – in its Christian and spiritualistic sense – and a future life for the personality of the deceased, they yet
credit man with such a potentiality of will, that it depends on him to become a Bodhisatwa and acquire the power to regulate his future
existences, whether in a physical or in a semi-material shape.

"Lamaists believe in the indestructibility of matter, as an element. They reject the immortality, and
even the survival of the personal self, teaching that the individual self alone – i.e., the collective
aggregation of the many personal selves that were represented by that One during the long series of various existences – may survive. The latter
may even become eternal – the word eternity with them embracing but the period of a great cycle – eternal in its integral individuality, but this
may be done only by becoming a Dhyan-Chohan, a 'celestial Buddha,' or what a Christian Kabbalist might call a 'planetary spirit' or one of the
Elohim; a part of the 'conscious whole,' composed of the aggregate intelligences in their universal collectivity, while Nirvâna is the
'unconscious whole.' He who becomes a Tong-pa-nyi – he who has attained the state of absolute freedom from any desire of living personally, the
highest condition of a saint – exists in non-existence and can benefit mortals no more. He is in 'Nipang' for he has reached the end of
'Thar-lam,' the path to deliverance, or salvation from transmigrations. He cannot perform Tul-pa – voluntary incarnation, whether temporary or
life-long – in the body of a living human being; for he is a 'Dang-ma,' an absolutely purified soul. Henceforth he is free from the danger of
'Dal-jor,' human rebirth; for the seven forms of existence – only six are given out to the uninitiated – subject to transmigration have been
safely crossed by him. 'He gazes with indifference in every sphere of upward transmigration on the whole period of time which covers the shorter
periods of personal existence,' says the Book of Khiu-ti.

"But, as 'there is more courage to accept being than non-being, life than death,' there are those among
the Bodhisatwas and the Lha – 'and as rare as the flower of udambara are they to meet with' – who voluntarily relinquish the blessing of the
attainment of perfect freedom, and remain in their personal selves, whether in forms visible or invisible to mortal sight – to teach and help
their weaker brothers.

"Some of them prolong their life on earth – though not to any supernatural limit; others become
'Dhyan-Chohans,' a class of the planetary spirits or 'devas' who, becoming, so to say, the guardian angels of men, are the only class out of the
seven-classed hierarchy of spirits in our system who preserve their personality. These holy Lha, instead of reaping the fruit of their deeds,
sacrifice themselves in the invisible world as the lord Sang-gyas – Buddha – did on this earth, and remain in Devachan – the world of bliss
nearest to the earth."

Lucifer, September, October, 1894
H. P. Blavatsky

About Theosophy

Theosophy, in its abstract meaning, is Divine Wisdom, or the aggregate of the knowledge and wisdom that underlie the Universe - the homogeneity of eternal GOOD; and in its concrete sense it is the sum total of the same as allotted to man by nature, on this earth, and no more.